Identity and Inclusion

On Thursday, Oct. 5, 2016, we left Knoxville at 7:15am, and after 3 hours in the car, we finally arrived in Atlanta, GA. We were welcomed graciously into the church by Sarah, a transgender woman and a leader in the church, and Pastor Paul, who is a gay male, at The City of Light. The City of Light Church has a mission to spread love and happiness and empower people to achieve their goals and help them with whatever they are struggling with. The church offers ESL classes, has a publishing company that hires people in need on the third floor, and provides a safe space to anyone and everyone. They also host approximately 20 different colleges who participate in Fall Break Programs.
After getting a brief overview of all of the things the church does for this community, we were off to our first service site at the International Rescue Committee. At the IRC, we helped to restock a "thrift" store for refugees who could get anything that they needed from the store for free. After hanging, stocking, and organizing loads of clothing, we heard from Duncan, the volunteer coordinator. He explained to us the impact that we would have, even though we would not see it directly. When the refugees come in on Monday morning, we helped to make sure that they arrived to a fully stocked store that will hopefully provide what they need. Individually, the service we provided over two hours raised enough money to pay for approximately 15 refugees' utility bill for the month.

When we returned to the City of Light, we began to help Dr. Paul organize and arrange the offices in the new building. These offices will eventually house nonprofits that will contribute to the actions of the church and continue to help this community in various ways.

Our service projects today contributed to our theme of Identity and Inclusion by allowing us to see and become more familiar with communities and others we may have never paid attention to otherwise. We worked hard to help the organizations who include people who otherwise may have not been included by providing them a service which we hope will begin a ripple effect to empower these individuals.

To break the tension between all of us who had only briefly met, we played the "knot" game where we grabbed hands from the person across from us and tried to untangle ourselves. We ended up even more tangled than when we began. Then, as things were getting rough, Sarah walked in and, thankfully, didn't ask very many questions but laughed and showed us to our room.

If you want for info:
City of Light Church: http://citylightchurch.net/
International Rescue Committee: https://www.rescue.org/